The General Synod, the Anglican Church’s governing body, passed the resolution Monday night, ignoring traditionalists who say that Jesus wanted only men in Church leadership positions, reported CNN.

Reformists pointed to Anglicans in Canada, the United States and New Zealand, which already allow female bishops, in arguing that women in the church should be appointed to positions of power. But some traditionalists now say that they will leave the Anglican Church for the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican, which ruled in May that anyone ordaining female priests would be excommunicated, said in a statement Tuesday that the Anglican Church’s move in the opposite direction “is a rift to the apostolic tradition” of ordaining only men as bishops. It also expressed concern that the decision would affect relations between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, which have been strained over issues such as gay Anglican clergy but have been making an effort to hold dialogues in recent years, and is set to be a central topic of the Lambeth Conference, a decennial convention of Anglican and Episcopal bishops scheduled to start later this month.

“This decision will have consequences on the dialogue which had brought good fruits,” the statement said.

Reuters reported that the Church adopted compromise measures to appease traditionalists’ concerns over women being ordained as bishops. The Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Anglican Communion, has had a female bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, as its head since June 2006.

According to the Roman Catholic Church, women should not be priests because Christ chose men to be his apostles. In May 2008, it ruled that those who attempt to ordain women as priests would be automatically excommunicated. The Church of England started ordaining women as priests in 1992.

In June, traditionalist Episcopal bishops were planning to skip a decennial policy conference over the issue of same-sex marriages. “Some Anglican and Episcopal churches have been quietly accepting church blessings of same-sex couples for some time. And in 2003, the Episcopal Church ordained openly gay bishop V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire,” findingDulcinea reports.

The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican/Episcopalian faith boasts about 70 million adherents around the globe and is thought to fall somewhere in between Catholicism and Protestantism on the theological spectrum.